On 10 September Norway's appeals court ruled that the trial of Marius Borg Hoiby will start from the beginning. Not an appeal against the sentence, not a review of one detail - the entire process runs again, and the second time it will last four weeks.

In June the Oslo District Court sentenced him to four years in prison for two rapes, for violence in close relationships and for dealing marijuana. Four years. That verdict now effectively does not exist until judgment is passed anew.

Hoiby is the son of Queen Mette-Marit from her life before the crown and the stepson of King Haakon. He has no title, no place in the line of succession, no duties at court whatsoever. But he has an address: Skaugum, the residence of the Norwegian crown prince family, where he has lived since he was four because his mother married into it.

And here is the part that raised eyebrows. He is serving house arrest with an electronic tag at Skaugum itself - with the pool, the barbecue, everything that comes with a house like that. Spanish media list the amenities at length. The Norwegian press insists the court gave him nothing: it has been his home since he was a child, and house arrest is served at home, not on an estate chosen by the convicted.

Both things are true at once, and that is precisely the discomfort. Nobody awarded him a swimming pool. It is simply that a man the Norwegian prosecution charges with two rapes is waiting out his four weeks in court on an estate with parkland, while someone convicted of far less in the same country waits in a cell with a small window. The law is the same. The address is not.

An additional layer: on 9 September Hoiby attended the state funeral ceremony of King Harald V. Convicted at first instance, and at a state funeral. The palace explained nothing, because there is nothing to explain - he is not a member of the royal family, so formally there is not even a protocol that excludes him.

Mette-Marit and Haakon are now queen and king. The first great question of their reign is not any act of state, but what will happen with the son who lives behind the same gate. And how long a monarchy can keep repeating that the private life of an informal member is none of its business, when that private life takes place at its address.